I've got a bit of an unusual project that I need some help with. I have a number of USB devices (1 webcam, 1 GPS, and 2 machine controllers) that I want to access remotely (these will be used in a robot). I've looked at using a USB extender, but for the same amount of money I can get a mini-ITX board computer so that got me thinking. Why not us Linux on a mini-ITX as a USB server? Is this even possible with DSL? I know I can share drives over a network but can I share USB devices? I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to networking and haven't done much with Linux or DSL in a long time, any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

I'm pretty noobish to networking an Linux, so I don't know much about SSH. In another forum it was suggested that I use VLC, which I learned today can stream live video. If that works then that will take care of the video side. All I need next is to be able to simultaneously send/receive ASCII to the other devices. There won't be a lot of data to pass, I can slow the GPS to only send updates (a short ASCII string) every second and the other devices probably need to be updated 10x a second (also short ASCII strings).

The idea is to get away from a "dumb" USB extender that has limited expansion capabilities and instead use a remote computer. I've even thought about using a remote desktop or such, but that may hog the data from the video stream... So much to learn! ;)